Chapter 6

1. Chapter 6 Policy Formulation— Policy Communities and Policy Networks

2. 本章学习重点 1.政策形成阶段的主要特征 2.政策次系统的不同类型 3. 知识与利益对政策表述的影响

3. 1.1 Conceptual Issues • After agovernment has acknowledged the existence of a public problem and the need to do something about it, the policy-makers must explore the various options available for addressing the problem. • 议程设定是确认值得政府关注的问题 政策形成是挑选可被政府采纳的方案

4. 1.2选择与排除 • The range of available options needs to be considered and narrowed to those that policy-makers can accept. This process of defining, considering, and accepting or rejecting options is the substance of the second stage of the policy cycle. • The essence of the search for solution to a problem entails discovering which actions are considered to be possible and which are not. At this stage, options that it is believed will not work or will for some reason be unacceptable to the powerful actors in the policy process are eliminated.

5. 1.3政策形成的复杂性 • Even if the policy makers agree on the existence of a problem, they may not share the same understanding of its cause or ramifications. It is therefore to be expected that the search for a solution to a problem will be contentious, and subject to a wide variety of pressures, defeating efforts to consider policy options in a rational manner.

6. 1.5约束条件之一：实质约束 • Substantive constrains are innate to the nature of the problem itself. 例如： 1. 不可能加印钞票来消除贫穷 2. 对于全球变暖问题，尚未有真正有效的办法 • Substantive problem are thus ‘objective’ in the sense there is not much anyone can do about them.

7. 1.6约束条件之二：程序约束 • Procedural constraints have to do with procedures involved in adopting an option or carrying them out.These constraints may be either institutional or tactical. • Institutional constrains include constitutional provisions, the organization of the state and society, and established patterns of ideas and beliefs.

8. 2.1 Important Questions • 1. Who is actually involved in the process of policy formulation? • 2. Is policy formulation a public or private activity? • 3. If private, why are some allowed access to this important part of the policy process and not others? • 4. If public, then what are the qualifications for participation?

9. 2.2参与者的区别 • 所有的公众都有可能卷入议程设定（例如参加罢工）。但进入政策形成阶段的行为者却只是有能力提出解决方案并评价其可行性的人。

10. 2.3政策议程中的次系统 • 1. Sub-Government / Iron Triangles / Issue Networks • 2. Advocacy Coalitions • 3. Policy Networks • 4. Policy Communities

11. 2.3.1 Sub-Government次 政 府 在政策过程中一种稳定而常规化的集团组合 __ understood as groupings of societal and state actors into routinized patterns of interaction.

12. 2.3.2 Iron Triangles • Interest groups,congressional committees, and government agencies had developed a system of mutual support in the course of constant mutual interaction over legislative and regulatory matters.

13. 2.3.3 政策过程的垄断者? • Such groupings were condemned for having ‘captured’ the policy process, which subverted the principles of popular democracy by ensuring that their own self-interests prevailed over those of the general public.

14. 2.3.4 Issue Network • Further research revealed that many of these sub-government were not all-powerful, and that in fact their influence on policy-making varied across issues and over time. • More flexible and less rigid notion of a policy subsystem: issue network

15. 2.3.5 A Reverse Image • Iron triangles and sub-governments suggest a stable set of participants coalesced to control fairly narrow public programmes which are in the direct economic interest of each party to the alliance. Issue networks are almost reverse image in each respects.

16. 2.4 Advocacy Coalition • An advocacy coalition consists of actors from a variety of public and private institutions at all levels of government who share a set of basic beliefs (policy goals plus causal and other perceptions) and who seek to manipulate the rules, budgets and personnel of governmental institutions in order to achieve these goals over time.

17. 2.4.1 common beliefs and knowledge • The actors come together for reasons of common beliefs, often based on their knowledge of the public problem they share and their common interests. The core of their beliefs system, consisting of views on the nature of human-kind and some desired state of affairs, is quite stable and holds the coalition together.

18. 2.4.2 Factors of Success • Coalition resources • External factors __ stable and predictable __ subject to change

19. 2.5 Policy Networks • R.A.W.Rhodes, early 1980’s: __ interactions among various departments and branches of the government and between the government and other organizations in society constituted policy networks which were instrumental in formulating and developing policy .

20. 2.5.1 Variations of networks • Wilks and Wright: __ networks varied along five key dimensions: the interests of the members, the membership, the extent of members’ interdependence, the extent to which the network is isolated from other networks, and the variations in the distribution of resources between the members.

21. 2.5.2 Interest-based • It is important to note that all of these different conceptions construed policy networks as being essentially interest-based. That is, participants were assumed to participate in these networks in order to further own ends, which were seen as essentially material and ‘objectively recognizable’ from outside the network.

22. 2.6 Policy Communities • The distinction between policy communities and policy networks in studies of policy subsystems was first drawn in the early 1980’s, although two terms continued to be used interchangeably for several more years.

23. 2.6.1 Distinction • Wilks and Wright: __ policy community identifies those actors and potential actors drawn from the policy universe who share a common policy focus. Network is the linking process within a policy community or more communities.

24. 2.6.2 Two Aspects • By associating a policy community with a specific knowledge base and a policy network with the pursuit of some material interest, two different aspects of the process of policy formulation came into sharper focus.